


The Lost Dog Affair

by Franzeska



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Fanfiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 17:30:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska





	The Lost Dog Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elise_Madrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elise_Madrid/gifts).



His feet pounded wetly on the pavement. On either side of him, abandoned factories towered over the alley, their facades slick with rain and nearly featureless. Unclimbable. The downpour continued. Illya turned left at the corner. Behind him, somewhere in the dark, the footsteps drew closer.

Another left. The industrial district sprawled from the docks to the foot of the hills that housed the ancient city center. Yesterday, Illya had stood on the walls of an old colonial fort, now a museum, and surveyed the entire river delta through the cool crisp morning. Tonight, the darkness pressed in, and the unlit alleyways might as well have been underground. The moon should be up at this hour, but there was no more sign of it than of the U.N.C.L.E. extraction team. Dead? Diverted? There was no way to know and no way to make contact. His communicator was gone, smashed under the heel of a man in a guard's uniform--though not, Illya thought, one on the official payroll. His uniform had fit him poorly about the shoulders, and Illya had gone out the window with the prize before his cronies or any of the real guards could catch him.

Illya dived right this time, into a broader alley. Ahead, a light shone from a window high up in the wall of one of the factories. Who knew what muck he was stepping in, but he could see enough to know the way was flat-ish. He couldn't afford to turn an ankle.

Illya ran on. Water sluiced down his face and glued his hair to his eyes. He brushed it away. Perhaps, Napoleon was right, and he should get it cut to a more regulation length. Illya amused himself with a vision of dressing like one of the stiff American agents at the local U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. They had taken to Napoleon immediately but eyed Illya with suspicion. Jealousy over his tonsorial superiority, no doubt.

The messenger bag smacked against his side. Over and over, it beat its bruising rhythm.Why couldn't it have been microfilm? He would have greatly preferred microfilm. He would have understood microfilm. And that was the trouble: for all that U.N.C.L.E. had assigned a dozen men and spent a month hunting, they still knew nothing. Silver thieves, yes, a ring of silver thieves, but the pattern made no more sense now than when he had first been briefed. The only change was his growing sense that something about the crimes was not right. They were about more than profit.

He turned left again. The docks were this way. It was a sensible direction that a little thief with a valuable prize and dangerous enemies might take. There would be methods of escape there and witnesses. Illya slowed, clutching his side. He breathed heavily. He thought of Samson, one of the aforementioned Americans whom he had had the misfortune to encounter in the U.N.C.L.E. gym. The man had tried to show off. It was hardly Illya's fault that he was out of shape.

Illya wheezed and staggered forward and was rewarded with the sound of a cocked pistol. A man the size, shape, and approximate scent of a gorilla came around the corner. The one with the gun lurched out of the darkness behind him. They were both furious and breathing hard, but not so hard that he'd risk a bullet to the back.

Illya raised his hands.

***

Illya crashed, face-first, into the table, turning to the side at the last moment. His cheek stung. His wrists already ached where the ropes had swollen with water.

He shivered dramatically and looked around at the half field of vision available from the table. They had taken him out of the warehouse district, back towards the old city and then beyond it up the hillside in a jouncing van that did the bruise on his side no good. Illya judged that they were in one of the more modern, fashionable residential districts. This room was a parody of an old man's den, full of leather and crystal decanters. Next to him, on the ostentatious desk, stood a little guillotine for chopping the ends from cigars. Perhaps fear and snivelling would be superior to defiance. A thief then? Interested in the prize for its monetary value and caught up in a struggle he did not understand? Whatever was going on here, it wasn't worth a finger.

Directly behind him, and outside of his field of vision, the door hit the expensive wood paneling with a crash.

"Is it there? Does he have it?"

Scuffling. His aching wrists were freed and the bag wrenched from his arm.

"The dog, you fools, _the dog!_ "

Illya twisted around. The leader of this particular band of light-fingered gentlemen rifled through his messenger bag. He gave a cry and lifted out his prize, the rabbit all of the hounds had spent the last week chasing. He held it aloft, and the light glinted from its screaming mouth, its upraised wings. This incongruous object was an 18th Century fire dog, shaped like a rearing gryphon and covered in silver.

"Now, Mr… _Smith_ ," the leader said, "You will tell me exactly why you stole this and whom it was intended for." He motioned to the man accompanying him.

Napoleon stepped forward, his face blank.

Illya blinked. So _this_ was where he'd gotten to. An _'emergency mission to Burma'_ indeed! "No, please," said Illya in Mr. Smith's querulous voice. "I know nothing."

That much was true. They knew that a group of thieves was stealing silver artifacts of some antiquity, but the age and provenance and even the purity of the silver varied considerably. The group had meanwhile ignored other silver pieces in the same victims' homes, pieces far more worthy of a collector. Illya did not believe this had anything to do with collectors. The fire dog was still a mystery, but certain of the pieces had a noticeable... similarity to them: Men whose faces were made up of greenery, prancing goat-like figures, mystical symbols.

The lieutenant--or whomever Napoleon was pretending to be--dragged Illya down the hall. His hand lingered on the small of Illya's back, a tiny stolen intimacy despite the inappropriate place and time. (But then that was Napoleon all over.) "Black magic," he hissed in Illya's ear. "It's some kind of ceremony to rule the world."

Illya rolled his eyes. _Oh brother,_ he thought. _It_ would _be megalomaniacs._


End file.
